In nearly countries and all 50 U. AP photographers assembled a visual catalog of our civilization as life in hurtled directly at us at every speed and in every imaginable color and flavor β dizzying, unremitting, challenging the human race to make sense of it.
And behind it all, the unspoken questions:. How do you stop time? How do you preserve moments? Amid all the quick cuts that cut to the quick, how do you absorb what needs to be seen and remembered? The answer is encapsulated β as it has been for nearly two centuries now β in one word that contains multitudes and possibilities: photography.
Thanks to photographers and their cameras, we were able to look down from the air. We crawled on the ground and looked up at events unfolding. We swam in the ocean. We gazed from a distance and got in front of fascinating faces. We looked straight on. We stared at the news from oblique angles.
We saw landscapes of violence and of inspiration, and we saw intimate detail that only a modern digital camera with a talented human being behind it can deliver. We saw how people across the planet elected each other, loved each other, broke bread with each other, competed against each other in the most prestigious of forums.
We saw them pray for β and with β each other, kill each other, mourn each other. A pope alone in his chair, contemplating. Lava flowing across a burning landscape in Iceland. A former president of the United States β now its next president, too β thrusting his fist skyward in defiance after narrowly escaping an assassination attempt outside a small western Pennsylvania city.
